According to Arthur and David, a situation in technological development is characterized by dependence on the trajectory of previous development if:
The choice of mass technology observed in reality was not predictable;
This choice is almost impossible to change due to the magnitude of the costs that must be made in a coordinated and simultaneous manner (or within a short time);
Massively distributed technology is likely to be ineffective.
The emergence of such situations, in turn, is the result of the functioning of two mechanisms: a) increasing returns to scale; b) the impact of small random events.
Increasing returns are a consequence of the interconnectedness of technology and improving skills in working with it as part of human capital arising as a result of the learning process during the application of technology ( learning by using), and network externalities and investment immobility.
An example is given, in particular, of the QWERTY keyboard layout of typewriters and then computers (QWERTY- the first six letters of the Latin keyboard layout). This arrangement arose because it avoided the clutching of the levers when printing the most frequently repeated sequences of letters on mechanical typewriters. Subsequently, this drawback - the clutch of the levers - was overcome, but the keyboard QWERTY has already conquered the world. Typewriters with alternative, often more ergonomic layouts were not in demand, also because most typists had the skills to type on a keyboard QWERTY retraining them would be associated with prohibitively high costs.
The mechanism of small random events, i.e. such events that could not be foreseen in advance by an outside observer with limited knowledge are “responsible” for which of the available technologies turns out to be actually chosen, winning
1 David P. Clio and the Economics of QWERTY // American Economic Review.
1985. No. 75. P. 332-337.
Arthur B.W. Competing Technologies, Increasing Returns and Lock-in by Historical Events//Economic Journal. 1989. No. 99. P. 116-131.
in competition with functionally similar technologies. “Thanks” to him, such a victory is usually not associated with greater efficiency.
Subsequently, institutional changes were also analyzed using the concept of dependence on the trajectory of previous development. Institutional inertia is the reason that at a given moment in the institutional structure of the economy, some of the well-known institutional innovations - in principle more effective than those actually used - are nevertheless not applied in practice.
The phenomenon of institutional inertia is based, first of all, on the limited rationality of economic agents who chose and began en masse to master not the best institution, and, in addition, purely economic factors that make it inappropriate to change an institution due to the threat of significant costs.
An alternative view of institutional inertia is associated with the Schumpeterian and neo-Schumpeterian tradition of analyzing technological change. In accordance with it, technological changes are carried out within certain clusters, which represent a limited range of technology options that can be formed from initial knowledge.
The described interpretations of the dependence on the trajectory of previous development in the sphere of technological changes, when applied to the sphere of institutional changes, lead to significantly different assessments of the possibility of significant or abrupt changes in the institutional structure of economies. V depending on institutional inertia.
According With the first of the interpretations, there are no restrictions on the content of the idea of a new institution (or system of institutions), except for the restrictions creativity individuals seeking to create an institutional environment that best suits their interests. The idea of institutional change can also be borrowed or purposefully created, i.e. be designed. However, only that institutional change will enter into mass practice, the benefits of which will exceed the costs of switching to following the new rule.
According to the second interpretation of institutional inertia, within the existing institutional environment, ideas for institutional innovations that are not a recombination of the components of the rules that make up this environment cannot arise. With this approach, the purposeful design of a new rule turns out to be fundamentally limited by the framework of diversity formed by the complete
by trying them all possible combinations the mentioned components. At the same time, a borrowed idea that does not fit into this framework is rejected not because of ineffectiveness (no matter - social ineffectiveness or ineffectiveness for special interest groups carrying out the restructuring of the institutional environment), but because of inconsistency with existing rules.
The existing experience of both technological and institutional changes convincingly testifies in favor of a more correct interpretation of institutional inertia given in the works of Arthur and David and their followers. In other words, freely emerging innovation ideas pass through a selection filter based on the criterion of efficiency, which determines which of them (taking into account the effect of increasing returns and the randomness of the initial choice) will receive mass distribution. Historical heritage (material or institutional) manifests itself within the framework of this concept not in restrictions on ideas, but in the specific structure of benefits and costs inherent in basically similar innovations competing for distribution in divergent economic systems.
Note that the heuristic value of the concept of institutional inertia lies not in the possibility of a “universal” explanation of any difficulties arising along the path of institutional transformations, but in drawing attention to the specific beneficiaries of the old rules, who, thanks to the latter, have economic and political opportunities that allow them to block potentially more effective innovations .
The concept of the locking effect was used by Douglas North to explain situations often encountered in practice in which an institutional change that could significantly improve the conditions for the production of value, despite this, is not implemented in practice.
QWERTY effects in modern scientific literature mean all types
comparatively ineffective but persistent standards that demonstrate that “history matters.”
These effects can be detected in two ways:
– or compare actually coexisting in modern world technical standards - or compare implemented technical innovations with potentially possible, but not implemented ones.
Standards that coexist.
Although the modern economy has long been globalizing and unifying, in different countries The rest of the world continues to maintain different technical standards that are incompatible with each other. Some examples are well known. Besides known history with typewriter keyboards, from which, in fact, the term QWERTY effects came, one can cite, for example, the differences between left-handed (in the former British Empire) and right-hand traffic on the roads of different countries. This forces some automakers to put the steering wheel on their cars on the left, and others on the right. Other examples are less well known, such as differences in railway gauges or electrical transmission standards.
Perhaps QWERTY effects only emerged relatively early in economic history? No, they also manifest themselves in the era of scientific and technological revolution. Examples often cited are the formation of standards for television equipment (the 550-line standard in the USA compared to the best 800-line standard in Europe), video cassettes and CDs (the victory of the VHS standard over VETA), the development of the software market (the victory of DOS/WINDOWS over Macintosh), etc.
At a symposium at the State University - Higher School of Economics, D. Koptyubenko spoke about how technological QWERTY effects complicate the development of electronic cash payment systems. It turns out that the previously introduced debit plastic cards and the old check payment system are preventing the introduction of more advanced “electronic money” (chip cards) in developed countries. As a result, experts predict higher rates of transition to “electronic money” either in countries that are somewhat lagging behind in their development (like, say, Russia) or in countries with very strong government regulation (like, for example, Singapore).
Standards that could coexist.
Compared to the study of competition between different standards, the analysis of “failed economic history” is somewhat more speculative, but also more promising. The point is that, in the opinion of many historians and economists, some technical innovations that were victorious due to opportunistic circumstances blocked other, potentially more effective paths of development. The idea of comparing the effectiveness of actually implemented and potentially possible technological strategies was first expressed in the infamous book of the American historian-economist P. Vogeli, published in 1964, “Railroads and the Economic Growth of America.”
It was traditionally believed that railway construction was one of the “locomotives” of the rapid economic growth of America in the 19th century. Vogel tried to test the usual assessments of the transport revolution in the language of numbers. He built a counterfactual model of how the United States would develop if, instead of “iron horses,” stagecoaches and steamships continued to ply its expanses. The results of mathematical calculations turned out to be very paradoxical: the contribution of railway construction turned out to be extremely small, equal to the national product in just a few months (in 1890, the US GNI would have been lower by about 4-5%).
A noisy discussion immediately broke out around Vogel's book. Critics rightly pointed out that the accuracy of his calculations is very arbitrary, since it is difficult to reliably measure what did not exist. Most importantly, Vogel's model abstracted from some important qualitative changes initiated by construction railways, in particular because the acceleration of transportation made it possible to produce new goods that otherwise would not have been produced.
David and other "QWERTY economists" do not attempt to quantify
alternative technology strategies, but they widely use a qualitative comparison of the real with the potentially possible. Moreover, if Vogel admitted that in real story However, the most effective option won, then David’s followers admit the possibility of victory of just the ineffective options.
One example of this kind is the story nuclear energy. The modern "peaceful atom" is essentially a by-product of " cold war", since the first nuclear power plants 1950-1960s were intended primarily to demonstrate the possibility of peaceful use of technologies originally intended for military purposes. This has contributed to the adoption of light water reactors as the standard, but it is believed that alternative civilian designs nuclear reactors(for example, a gas-cooled reactor) not genetically related to military technologies could be more effective.
So, after numerous studies of QWERTY effects, historians and economists were amazed to discover that many of the symbols around us technical progress acquired a familiar appearance to us as a result of, in general, largely random circumstances. This amazement is due to the fact that the theory of choice existing in economics is built mainly on the model of establishing an equilibrium market price, which occurs, as S. Zirel pointed out, by trial and error in the process of a very large (in the limit - infinite) number of transactions. The number of acts of establishing a new standard is obviously limited: usually several attempts are made to establish relatively ineffective standards, and then a fairly effective standard is established, which is subsequently either not adjusted at all or adjusted a small number of times. Therefore, achieving an optimal standard is not the rule, but the exception [Tsirel, 2005]. Thus, a new approach to economic history helps us realize that the market mechanism does not optimize everything in the world.
R.M. NUREYEV, Y.V. LATOV
What is path dependence and how do Russian economists study it.
27. QWERTY effects
QWERTY effects in modern scientific literature refer to all sorts of relatively ineffective but persistent standards that demonstrate that "history matters."
These effects can be detected in two ways:
– or compare technical standards that actually coexist in the modern world,
–or compare implemented technical innovations with potentially possible but not implemented ones.
Although the modern economy has long been globalizing and unifying, different countries around the world continue to maintain different technical standards that are incompatible with each other. Some examples are well known. In addition to the well-known history of typewriter keyboards, from which, in fact, the term QWERTY effects2 came, one can cite, for example, the differences between left-hand traffic (in the former British Empire) and right-hand traffic on the roads of different countries. This forces some automakers to put the steering wheel on their cars on the left, and others on the right. Other examples are less well known, such as differences in railway gauges or electrical transmission standards.
Perhaps QWERTY effects only emerged relatively early in economic history? No, they also manifest themselves in the era of scientific and technological revolution. Examples often cited are the formation of television equipment standards (the 550-line standard in the USA compared to the best 800-line standard in Europe), video cassettes and CDs, the development of the software market, etc.
28, 29, 30.
From QWERTY-nomics to the economic theory of standards
and alternative economic history of technology
The name of the Path Dependency theory is usually translated in Russian literature as “dependence on previous development” 3 . She, too, pays attention to institutional change and the role of institutions in technical change. However, if in the “Northian” new economic history the main emphasis is placed on the revolutionary impact that legal innovations and changes in transaction costs have on socio-economic development, then in the theory of dependence on previous development the main attention is paid to the inertia of development. In other words, if the followers of D. North study how institutional innovations become possible, then the followers of P. David and B. Arthur, on the contrary, study why institutional innovations are not always possible. In addition, if D. North, when studying institutions, focuses on property rights, then P. David and B. Arthur focus on informal mechanisms of choice.
Since both of these aspects are related to each other, like heads and tails, there is intense interaction and cross-fertilization of these two institutional theories of economic history. It is characteristic that D. North, in his book “Institutions, Institutional Changes and the Functioning of the Economy,” very quickly responded to the ideas of the “newest economists” that had just begun to gain popularity and included them in his concept as one of its key components.
The formation of the Path Dependency theory began in 1985, when P. David published a short article 4 devoted to such a seemingly minor issue as the formation of a standard for keyboards of printing devices. He argued that the familiar QWERTY keyboard of printing devices was the result of the victory of a less efficient standard over more efficient ones. The study of the economic history of technical standards, begun after the pioneering work of P. David and B. Arthur, showed an unusually wide distribution of QWERTY effects in almost all industries.
QWERTY effects in modern scientific literature refer to all sorts of relatively ineffective but persistent standards that demonstrate that “history matters.” These effects can be detected in two ways −
or compare technical standards that actually coexist in the modern world,
or compare implemented technical innovations with potentially possible but not implemented ones.
Compared to the study of competition between different technical standards, somewhat more speculative, but also more promising, is the analysis of “failed economic history.” The point is that, in the opinion of many historians and economists, some technical innovations that were victorious due to opportunistic circumstances blocked other, potentially more effective paths of development.
The theory of dependence on previous development and related scientific research on alternative history are based not on neoclassical “economics” (like “Vogel’s” new economic history), but on the metascientific paradigm of synergetics associated with the ideas of the famous Belgian chemist Ilya Prigogine (also Nobel laureate), creator of the theory of self-organization of order from chaos 5. According to the synergetic approach he developed, the development of society is not strictly predetermined (according to the principle “nothing else is given”). In fact, there is an alternation of periods of evolution, when the vector of development cannot be changed (movement along an attractor), and bifurcation points at which the possibility of choice arises. When “QWERTY economists” talk about the historical randomness of the initial choice, they consider precisely the bifurcation points of history - those moments when any one possibility is chosen from a fan of different alternatives. The choice in such situations almost always occurs under conditions of uncertainty and instability of the balance of social forces. Therefore, during bifurcation, even very minor subjective circumstances can turn out to be fateful - according to the “Bradbury butterfly” principle.
So, after numerous studies of QWERTY effects, historians and economists were amazed to discover that many of the symbols of technological progress around us acquired a familiar appearance as a result of, in general, largely random circumstances, and that we do not live in the best of worlds. .
From QWERTY-nomics to the economic theory of Path Dependency
and alternative economic history of institutions
The most important of the new ideas proposed in the development of the original concept of P. David is that the victory of the initially chosen standards/norms over all others, even comparatively more effective ones, can be observed not only in the history of the development of technologies, but also in the history of the development of institutions . In the 1990s. A lot of research has appeared, including the work of Douglas North himself, developing this new direction of using the QWERTY approach. The English scientist D. Puffert directly stated that “dependence on previous development for institutions is likely to be quite similar to dependence on previous development for technologies, since both are based on the high value of adaptation to some general practice(any technique or rule), so that deviations from it become too costly” 6.
If when describing the history of technical innovations they often write about QWERTY effects, then in the framework of the analysis of institutional innovations they usually talk about Path Dependency - dependence on previous development. However, both of these terms are used by many as synonymous. P. David himself gave Path Dependency a definition as follows: “dependence on previous development is a sequence of economic changes in which distant events of the past can have an important influence on the possible outcome, moreover, random events rather than systematic patterns” 7 .
In the history of the development of institutions, manifestations of dependence on previous development can be traced at two levels - firstly, at the level of individual institutions (legal, organizational, political, etc.), and secondly, at the level of institutional systems (especially national economic systems).
To date, many studies have accumulated that analyze the dependence on previous development in the formation of the institutions themselves - the gold standard, systems of common and civil law, the central bank, etc.
An important contribution to the economic theory of institutional change was made by the Russian economist Viktor Meerovich Polterovich, who, using the example of the post-Soviet economy, examined such a curious type of dependence on previous development as an “institutional trap” 8. The point is that among the development paths there are options that are more profitable in the short term, but in the long term they are not only less effective than alternatives (foreign economists have considered just such cases), but they make further development simply impossible. This was, in particular, the effect of the development of the barter economy in post-Soviet Russia: it made it possible to temporarily solve the problems of ineffective enterprises, but made any decisive restructuring of production impossible.
Concerning comparative analysis national economic systems as the institutional framework of economic evolution, then it has in economic science quite a long tradition. One can recall at least the textbook works of V.I., which are textbook for Russian social scientists of the older generation. Lenin (for example, “The Agrarian Program of Social Democracy in the First Russian Revolution of 1905-1907” written in 1908), dedicated to the comparison of the Prussian (Junker) and American (farmer) ways of developing capitalism in agriculture 9 . He emphasized that the main obstacle to the development of capitalism in Russia is precisely the feudal heritage, which is manifested not only in landownership, but also in communal land use. In foreign historical and economic science, one can recall, for example, the theory of echelons of development of capitalism according to A. Gerschenkron 10, according to which the path of development of a country is “programmed” for centuries to come by whether it was able to reach capitalism on its own (the first echelon), or by external influence initiated internal sources of self-development (second echelon), or capitalism remains an “additive from the outside” (third echelon). D. North worked in the same vein, pointing out the deep and insurmountable differences between the development of Latin America, which inherited the institutions of backward Spain, and North America, which developed under the influence of more advanced English institutions.
If works on QWERTY effects in the history of technology often emphasize the randomness and opportunistic choice of the winning technology, then among Path Dependency researchers in the development of institutions this motive sounds much weaker. Apparently, the choice of institutions, unlike the choice of technologies, is more collective in nature, and therefore it is more natural 11 . Both directions are related in that researchers emphasize high inertia social development, which makes it impossible to quickly change both the technologies used and the prevailing norms.
1 is typical for the analysis of moral hazard problems with hidden effects.
2 Actually, the diametrically opposite situation also deserves attention - the complementarity of tasks from the point of view of the agent in combination with their substitutability for the principal.
3 Strictly speaking, such a simplified translation is not entirely correct, since it risks simplifying the essence of the phenomenon. Everything in the world depends on the past in the sense that nothing arises from nothing. The meaning of the Path Dependency theory is that the possibilities of choice that are made “here and now” are strictly determined by the choice made “somewhere and sometime before.”
4 David Paul A. Clio and the Economics of QWERTY // American Economic Review. 1985. Vol. 75. No. 2.
5 S. Margolis and S. Liebowitz, in their encyclopedic article on Path Dependency, clearly state that “prior dependence is an idea that came to economics from intellectual movements that arose in another field. In physics and mathematics, these ideas are associated with chaos theory" (Margolis S.E., Liebowitz S.J. Path Dependence // The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and Law. Ed. by P. Newman. L.: Macmillan, 1998). See also: Borodkin L.I. “Order out of chaos”: concepts of synergetics in methodology historical research// New and recent history. 2003. No. 2. P. 98-118.
6 Puffert Douglas J., 2003a. Path Dependence, Network Form and Technological Change // History Matters: Essays on Economic Growth, Technology and Demographic Change. Ed. by W. Sundstrom, T. Guinnane, and W. Whatley. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003 ( http://www.vwl.uni-muenchen.de/ls_komlos/nettech1.pdf). See also: David P. Why are institutions the “carriers of history”? Path dependence and the evolution of conventions, organizations and institutions // Structural Change and Economic Dynamics. 1994. Vol. 5. No. 2.
7 David Paul A. Clio and the Economics of QWERTY // American Economic Review. 1985. Vol. 75. No. 2. R. 332.
8 Polterovich V.M. Institutional traps and economic reforms // Economics and mathematical methods. 1999. T. 35. No. 2.
9 See, for example: Lenin V.I. PSS. T. 16. pp. 215-219.
10 Herschenkron A. The approach to European industrialization: a postscript // Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays. Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University, 1962, pp. 353-364.
11 It is possible, however, that there is another explanation: it is psychologically more difficult to model an alternative version of institutional history than to imagine another version of the development of technology. It is enough to turn to alternative history as a genre of science fiction: writers “invented” steampunk ( alternative history new and modern times, where there are no gasoline engines), but in the design of alternative institutions they cannot come up with anything more original than extending or shortening the “life span” of fascism, communism, etc.
This effect is an example of the “lock in” effect. The main work, which has become a classic, is the article by Paul David: David P. Clio and Economics of QWERTY. American Economic Review. - 1985. - Vol. 75, No. 2.. It consists in the fact that the location of the keys on the computer keyboard is not chosen optimally, not in the most convenient way from the point of view of typing capabilities, that is, exactly this set of qwerty letters in a row is not optimal, but it is precisely for this set All users are used to it. In other words, a not-so-successful option has emerged for using the sequence of typing letters on the keyboard, but no one is going to change it or relearn it, since this has become a generally accepted practice, has accustomed agents to just such a sequence of letters, has formed and consolidated the Keyboard adaptation model proposed by A. Dvorak and U. Dili is considered the most optimal option for the arrangement of letters, as it provides the highest typing speed, which has been empirically proven, but it has not become as widespread as a keyboard with a qwerty key arrangement. The fact that Apple computers were designed to switch to a Dvorak keyboard did not ultimately lead to this keyboard becoming widespread. It should be especially noted that there are works, in particular, by S. Liebowitz and S. Margolis, who doubt that the Dvorak keyboard is more optimal than the qwerty standard keyboard. The advantage of one standard over another is associated with those arguments against the presence of “traps”, which I present above and in a number of my previous works, especially in the aspect of analyzing the efficiency/inefficiency ratio and taking into account the specifics of engineering work, which is not taken into account by most economists, who are unfortunately far away , from understanding the essence of this work and a genuine analysis of the rules that regulate and define it.. Now the costs of relearning and changing the set of letters will significantly exceed the costs of adaptation, and therefore these actions are not necessary. It seems that such effects arise due to the presence of a learning effect, when agents develop not the usual model of adaptation and adaptation, but rather a style of work, a habitual way of thinking, which in themselves are unique institutions that consolidate the current state of affairs.
Qwerty effect is a shining example technological evolution, selecting not the most acceptable branches of development. If in the future a more advanced technical result becomes obvious, it will be difficult to change the situation, which will require costs, in particular, to change the arrangement of letters on the keyboard, another keyboard. Even with the proven economic effect of such a change, implementing the change itself will be problematic. This is not always the case, but a certain set of cases from the development of technology can be cited, as examples can be given that run counter to this effect and show the existence of opportunities to correct an incorrect technical and technological solution.
The Qwerty effect is a typical example of a design error that was not corrected and which then eliminated the conditions for its own correction. The reasons for fixing such an error are: technological interdependence, standardization of technical activities, economies of scale and the established procedure for obtaining and using knowledge, that is, learning methods that make retraining difficult or impossible. This example tells us that in the area social evolution, unlike the biological one, the principle of “natural selection”, which allows you to select the best result, operates in a completely different way, and the idea of the best result differs from the stereotypical idea. If an investment is made in a suboptimal technology solution, then it becomes difficult to redirect the investment, or make additional investments to change the situation or the emerging standard. In addition, the increased productivity of the new device itself, as well as the increasing labor productivity due to the introduction of this device into production operations in the control system, as well as the provision of services, more than compensates for the technical design error that created a suboptimal standard, in particular in relation to to the keyboard. In addition, getting operators used to a given layout of letters on the keyboard, in case of necessary changes, also leads to the costs of retraining and “re-accustoming”, which are not rational and justified, because they can reduce productivity in the first stages, which will not be compensated by the benefits of straightening the specified design errors. In the development of engineering and technology, such errors occur frequently, since at the design stage it is not always clear which physics will be the best when creating a particular device. Examples are known from microelectronics and the development of special technological equipment for the electronics industry. Yes, back in Soviet time, based on the fact that the prospects for which physics would turn out to be the best were unclear, two factories “Angstrem” and “Mikron” were created in Zelenograd, which essentially made similar products, but using different technological methods, because it was not clear which method, which technology will prevail in the competition over time.
The existence of the qwerty effect leads to interesting conclusions regarding the introduction of technical standards and regulations that can fix design errors or technical decision-making. The formed qwerty keyboard standard is very a clear example. The consolidation of this standard, even despite the presence of a more effective alternative, occurs not only for purely economic reasons. Here, the time it takes to follow a seemingly less effective alternative, the effect of addiction to it, the scale of distribution, and other psychological reasons become important. Irreversibility in use is formed when the ratio of performance does not give the agent a feeling of great gain in the event of a change in the keyboard, but certainly causes irritation and frustration due to the very change in the arrangement of letters. The algorithm for winning an ineffective solution is approximately the same as securing a monopoly on a product or market share of a company. Moreover, in the field of high-tech products, this right is additionally fixed through patents, copyright certificates of large financial investments in R&D, which result in any achievements in the field of creating new products.
Techniques and technologies are developing consistently; there can be no gaps or unexpected leaps in this development. If only basic science will not prepare completely different principles and conditions for the development of technical devices, giving rise to new way or the new kind a product that changes the appearance and character of a person’s life, for example, a mobile phone (the principle of cellular communication) or a computer, which is used as an independent tool for managing production and individual elements of human life. But in general, the improvement and development of technical systems occurs sequentially by increasing the result, sometimes by trial and error. The presence of the qwerty effect essentially means that the social structure and institutions “interfere” in the process of systematic improvement of technology, and clearly disrupt the process of systematic improvement. The nature of the organization of competition and the rules of this process have a strong influence on the ability and interest of firms to change the keyboard or other technical solution, to introduce their own competing standard, which can increase printing productivity. What if this parameter is not limiting in the functioning of the economic system? It is in this case that there is no need to change the standard and increase such productivity. The requirements for the interchangeability of units and parts of machines and devices is an institution that largely determines the nature of the development of technical systems. If the emergence of competing principles, technical standards, devices can shake the primacy of the principle of interchangeability, then the emergence of such a dichotomy can give rise to two vectors for the development of technical systems, which on an economic scale can lead to even higher costs than those that would be observed even with the development of chreod scenario. One of the problems is that P. David, the discoverer of the qwerty effect, referring in his classic work to B. Arthur, who established the properties of a process characterized by increasing returns, is that in relation to technical solutions, as a rule, an engineer does not have an urn with different colored balls, and does not have the ability to remove a ball from the urn, returning it back with the addition of another ball of the same color, so that the probability of adding a ball of the same color is an increasing function of the proportion in which a given color is represented in the urn, and the share of one of the colors with probability. 100% tends to one. This is simply not possible due to the specifics of engineering work and obtaining appropriate technical solutions. Of course, the development of design methods here determines the result, but the factor of chance in the choice of a technical solution retains its strong influence. Of course, the level of training of engineers is also important, although less competent people can arbitrarily propose an optimal solution, which will be enshrined in the design of a technical device.
Most likely, the choice of a standard, when the superiority of a particular technical solution is not obvious, is subject to the principle of satisfaction, that is, obtaining an acceptable satisfactory result, which then undergoes rapid institutionalization, that is, it becomes overgrown with a system of rules that make it difficult to change the standard and the generally accepted method until In principle, this will likely be revised and abolished as a result, for example, of the emergence of systems that provide printing of text from voice, and, at the same time, translating the text into different languages with the required level of spelling accuracy. Such systems are already beginning to appear, and, apparently, they will be the future of the development of this technical sector of processing and presenting information, and printing, of course, is a way of presenting information.
Thus, we can talk about the presence of an apparent “lock in” effect. This again highlights the difficulty in determining the chreodality property of a development trajectory in relation to technical and socio-economic systems. Of course, this difficulty imposes some requirements on institutional planning related to how agents manage time as a resource and what transactions they carry out in doing so. The goal of planning institutions should be precisely to determine time as a resource and the types of transactions and behavior patterns of agents that can manifest themselves along a given trajectory of economic and institutional development. Qwerty-effect for special technical systems, which is caused not by a discrepancy between the tastes of manufacturers and consumers, but by the content side of the design of technical systems/
The adoption of any technical solution may be obviously ineffective, and an effective solution will not be found. In this case, a standard for the use of a given unit or part or processing method may arise, which will exist for some time, but may well be revised or canceled. Hence, the most important condition the presence of this effect is the accessibility in its identification and the duration of action, which immediately takes it out of the usual design error into a different plane. Although, by and large, there is no fundamental difference at all. Only in one case is it possible to correct it, even if the action time is long, and in the other, it is not possible, although then it is necessary to demonstrate that sufficient efforts are being made to correct it, and not just talk about changing the order of letters on the keyboard. Special ineffective technological solutions do not have the same broad consumer effect as a keyboard, therefore the example with a keyboard is special, exceptional, and therefore not indicative, especially since there are works based on ergonomic research that cast doubt on the validity of this effect. In any case, the presence of such effects, if they are indeed some special effects, which there is reasonable doubt about, is associated with the dysfunction of institutions and the inability to foresee the effectiveness of future technical solutions and the future of technologies and features technological development. Why would a more effective technological alternative be rejected? Because the effectiveness of a technology cannot be discovered before it is applied, and it is not always possible to use both technologies at once. This is the same problem as with assessing institutional changes - talking about the effectiveness of which will only become possible when they have been completed and implemented. Otherwise, we can only talk about the expected effectiveness and the expected assessment of the harmlessness of the development option.
As we see, time becomes a very significant limitation when assessing the effectiveness and rationality of technical solutions, when introducing new institutions, when determining the reactions of agents and forming models for their adaptation. Time determines the quality of transactions, as well as their effectiveness, as well as the effectiveness of management and other decisions made, including decisions aimed at choosing a particular technical device. All these issues constitute, on the one hand, the difficulties of institutional planning; on the other, they determine the list of tasks that must be solved within the framework of institutional planning methods
It seems that the placement of letters on the keyboard influences which words we choose.
QWERTY - weird sound word, used to denote the most popular type of layout, is quite an important phenomenon. Various studies have shown that people tend to choose certain words depending on the number of letters in them located on the right side of the keyboard.
The most recent and most rigorous study was conducted by David Garcia of ETH Zurich and Martin Strohmaier of the Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences in Mannheim, Germany. Scientists analyzed millions of product names and headlines on 11 websites, including , Yelp, Rotten Tomatoes, and even .
Scientists presented “clear evidence” of the existence of the QWERTY effect in April at the 25th World Wide Web Conference. Garcia and Strohmaier showed that product names consisting primarily of letters on the right side of the keyboard received higher ratings on 9 out of 11 sites i We are talking only about the English layout. The opposite was true for only one of them, the porn site Redtube. “This proves that such a preponderance is in the direction of symbols falling under right hand, does not necessarily work in every context,” the authors comment.
Also, during the analysis of review texts, it turned out that positive reviews were dominated by words with a larger proportion of characters from the right half of the QWERTY layout.
Photo: Reuters/Kacper Pempel
Why do people prefer words made up of characters on the right side of the keyboard?
This may be a consequence of the common cultural association of the right with something good, and the left with something bad. We may give preference to these letters because it is more convenient for us to enter them: firstly, most people are right-handed, and secondly, there are fewer letters on the right side than on the left.
Naomi Baron, a professor at American University who studies language and technology, told New Scientist that this preference may also be because there are more vowels on the right side of the keyboard, which have more positive associations. “We don't put emotion into consonants, only vowels,” Baron says.
The QWERTY effect does not determine our purchasing preferences, since Garcia and Strohmaier did not see any pattern in the list of best-selling products on Amazon. However, this effect may influence what parents name their children. A 2014 study found that names with a predominance of letters on the right side of the keyboard have become more popular since the 1960s, when the QWERTY layout became widespread.
In addition, in 2012, scientists proved the particularly strong influence of the QWERTY effect on the structure of words that appeared already in the computer era. This explains why we use the expression LOL so much.